


Ars Moriendi

by Sath



Series: Aimantation [2]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Kink Meme, M/M, Oral Sex, also the committee for public safety, epic illustration within, seriously the art for this is like what would happen if gustave doré was into dick engraving, way too much art history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 18:52:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/pseuds/Sath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras models for Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ars Moriendi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nisiedraws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisiedraws/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Ars Moriendi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4428137) by [drunkenbilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkenbilly/pseuds/drunkenbilly)



Grantaire had taken to avoiding the Musain, at least until the marks from Enjolras’s rather carnal exploration of their philosophical differences had faded completely. The Corinthe was similarly off-limits. Unfortunately, his friends did not know half as many places to drink as Grantaire did, and so he’d spent the past two days in self-isolation. 

Enjolras was invariably at his printer’s every Thursday afternoon, so Grantaire took advantage of his absence to sneak into the Corinthe undisturbed. Noon was apparently as early for Grantaire as it was for everyone else, since the Corinthe’s sole occupants seemed to be tired coachmen. Grantaire was about to return home to drink alone when Courfeyrac emerged from the tannery Mme Hucheloup called a kitchen.

“Grantaire! We thought you’d fallen into the Seine!” Courfeyrac said, crossing the café to embrace him warmly. “Did you just wake up? We even asked Enjolras where he hid your corpse, but he seemed to think it was a joke and as consequence, didn’t respond.” 

“Courfeyrac, I need you naked.”

Courfeyrac’s mouth quirked into a grin and he gestured for Grantaire to take a seat next to him. The table had the remnants of a dismal breakfast and a glass of vinegary wine still on it, which Courfeyrac offered to Grantaire.

“I almost don’t want to know _why_ you have suddenly developed this need,” Courfeyrac said, chewing thoughtfully on his bread. “Nevertheless, I must ask – why?”

“I tried to discuss art with a grotty little abbé and he decided to commission me to paint classical fellatio instead. I need you to model for Meleager because I’m too cheap to hire someone.” 

“I am somehow unsurprised by that. So where is Atalanta?” Courfeyrac asked. 

“In a closet at my studio.”

Courfeyrac affected a horrified expression. “She’ll suffocate in there.”

“Fortunately for her, she’s an underpainting of a praying Magdalene which Le Gros rejected precisely because she already looked like she was masturbating someone,” Grantaire said. 

“Then consider me uninterested.”

“You don’t have anything better to do with your afternoon.”

“Untrue,” Courfeyrac lied. “I must feed my dog Carl personally, lest he turn obstreperous. Why don’t you ask Marius? He’s always penniless and spends his hours staring into space regardless.” 

“True, but I don’t think Marius was nude even at the hour of his birth.”

Courfeyrac laughed. “Marius and Enjolras – what a strange and lovely pair of virgins we have amongst us.”

Grantaire hoped Courfeyrac would overlook the mortified look on Grantaire’s face, because if Courfeyrac even suspected that their chief was no longer quite entirely a virgin, the shock would kill both of them.

“You could ask Enjolras, actually,” Courfeyrac said. “He used to model for the students at the Mazarin, when one of his fights with the _pater terribilis_ left him short on funds. Speaking of whom, he’s just arrived.”

Before Grantaire could flee or properly process the new knowledge that Enjolras’s beauty had been wasted on the Mazarin, Courfeyrac waved Enjolras over to their table and pushed out a chair for him. Enjolras hardly glanced at Grantaire, though that wasn’t unusual. He had a faint dusting of ink powder over his otherwise spotless coat; he must’ve finished early at the printer’s and was still thrumming with the energy of it. The overall effect was that Enjolras looked like a bourgeois fantasy of a coal worker.

“We were just talking about you, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac said. “Grantaire needs a model.”

Enjolras shrugged. “You forge exams, don’t you? A Buonapartist I detest set me an exam on the Egyptian campaign. Write it for me and I’ll pose.” 

“But it’s a nude,” Grantaire protested.

Enjolras curled his lip. “Of course it is.”

Somehow Enjolras could make unquestionably pleasant things, like him lying naked on a récamier, into resounding condemnations of Grantaire’s career choices. 

“Those of us not fortunate enough to live off our rich father in Tarascon must make do as we can. I am merely financing my education according to my own talents,” Grantaire said. “Like Feuilly does.”

“Is two days not enough time for you?” Enjolras asked, ignoring Grantaire’s dig. 

“I only need three hours to make your Buonapartist weep in rage as he fails you,” Grantaire said, drawing out the superfluous syllable. 

Enjolras took a thick sheaf of papers from his waistcoat, doubtless the manuscript of his latest republican screed, and tossed them on the table. “Good, here’s a writing sample. Now Courfeyrac, I came to bring you news of General Lamarque. He’s contracted cholera.” 

Courfeyrac was transformed by Enjolras’s announcement. He shifted from the amiable young man Grantaire knew so well, who laughed and joked and chased after girls, to a partisan Grantaire hardly recognized. The conversation went hurtling towards discontent, uprising, riot, and the barricade. 

“We need more guns,” Courfeyrac said. “We don’t have enough rifles to stand up to the National Guard.” 

Death had come to the Corinthe.

***

Grantaire had two aims for his evening. The first was to write a scathing critique of Napoleon’s entire Egyptian campaign, and the second was to drink himself stupid. He had gotten a head start on his drinking at the Corinthe, toasting each of his friends in turn as they arrived to discuss their plans for Lamarque’s eventual funeral. Then he had tried to read Enjolras’s writing, but fell asleep. He woke up to an empty cafe and the sensation of Mme Hucheloup fingering his wallet. With the mugging already out of the way, Grantaire walked back to his miserable flat on the Rue du Cygne. Three of his neighbour Caillat’s brood of children were sitting wide-eyed in the hallway; he was both a fecund and a violent drunk. 

Grantaire could hear Mme Caillat screaming and crying through the thin walls of the flat. Grantaire stuffed his ears with wadded cotton and went to his desk. He spread out a few pages of Enjolras’s writing and took out his own pen and paper, as well as the tumbler of brandy he’d left out from his last work session. 

While it should be technically impossible to cheat when taking a supervised exam, overcoming the indifferently regulated Parisian school system was approached by its students much more enthusiastically than attending lectures. Since the questions were distributed in advance, cheating only required that a student find someone capable of imitating his handwriting, then go to the test with the forged exam in his coat. There would be plenty of opportunities to swap out the pages of nonsense he would write during the exam for the carefully composed pages of the forgery. 

Grantaire normally enjoyed academic fraud, since it was easy money and he was rather good at it, but forging Enjolras’s exam was proving difficult. In person, Enjolras was sublime. On paper? He was worse than unremarkable - he was boring. Enjolras repeated himself and yet never seemed to finish a thought. Right to this, right to that, resistance to oppression is the consequence of aforementioned rights, insurrection is for the people, and so on. Had Grantaire not known Enjolras, he would have looked at the latest bulletin of Les Amis de l’ABC and thought, “here is the work of a middling lawyer.” Enjolras’s handwriting had a little more of his dignity, with its grandly round and flourished lettering, and it made Grantaire’s fingers cramp as he reproduced it. 

If all that survived of Enjolras were his broadsheets, he would be poorly remembered. The thought festered in Grantaire as the night progressed. 

***

Grantaire came to hunched over his desk. His back ached, and the chair had been unkind to his skinny arse. He looked at his pocket watch and saw that it read one o’clock – he’d promised to meet Enjolras in his studio at two. Enjolras was often late, because very little that normal people did mattered to him, so Grantaire would probably still have time to settle into his studio before Enjolras strolled in, if Enjolras remembered their agreement at all. Grantaire staggered into the corner that served as his washroom (the shared facilities on the ground floor were infernal) and tried to make himself look like a decent person who hadn’t passed out drunk and slept on his own face. 

It was twenty minutes after one by the time he stepped onto the Rue St. Denis and started on the short walk to his studio on the Quai des Augustins. The studio was one of several belonging to his instructor, Antoine-Jean Gros (Baron of the Empire, and do not forget that fact), but he’d given Grantaire the use of it since he now avoided painting whenever possible. Grantaire kept himself at a brisk pace and got to the studio with ten minutes to spare, but he almost puked in the Baron Gros’s hibiscuses when he finally came to a stop. His body couldn’t keep up with his drinking like it used to and he was sure he looked like a sweaty, red-eyed mess. At least Paris was flat – the hills back in Marseille would have murdered him. 

He felt a brief moment of panic when he realized the studio wasn’t locked. There was a small fortune in art supplies inside, as well as the china set Gros was hiding from his wife and in-laws so he could put it into hock. 

Enjolras had come _early_. He’d already perused through most of Grantaire’s small portrait paintings, judging by the pile of canvases he’d taken out and spread haphazardly on the floor. Enjolras frowned down at _Houri No. 4_. Musichetta had posed for it during a long afternoon at Joly’s. Her oriental drape had originally been one of Joly’s quilts and her veil had started its life as a tablecloth sent by Bossuet’s mother. Musichetta had been a difficult model; she had paid more attention to spitting grape seeds at Joly than maintaining her pout. 

“Is everything you paint trivial?” Enjolras asked. 

“At that size? Yes. David didn’t paint the _The Death of Marat_ on a table napkin. Did the concierge let you in?” 

“I picked the lock.” Enjolras glanced over to Grantaire’s latest attempt at a history painting, a large canvas of St. Sebastian. 

“I have absolutely no feelings about art,” Enjolras said. “Is that supposed to be Prouvaire?” 

Jehan had gamely posed as Sebastian in the coldest part of winter. When it started to look like his nipples would freeze off, Grantaire had wrapped Jehan in a hussar’s coat and irreverently put trousers on St. Sebastian. Jehan had been disappointed he couldn’t suffer more for Art, but he did make for a dashing cavalry officer. 

“I’m surprised you recognized him,” was all Grantaire said. 

“It seems like most of my friends have posed for you. Just not nude.” 

Grantaire only prickled a little at Enjolras’s casual separation of him from Les Amis de l’ABC. “Well, that requires a certain intimacy you can only expect from lovers and strangers, which you’d already know.” 

Enjolras looked bewildered. 

“From your time posing at the Mazarin,” Grantaire added. “Why did you do it, by the way?”

“Because if I have to prostitute my time, I’d rather keep my mind for my own use rather than lending it out to tutor some clerk’s brat. Did you finish the exam?” 

“It’s very Enjolraic,” Grantaire said. 

“Let’s get on with it, then - I can’t give you my entire day. I assume you want me on the couch?” 

Enjolras started stripping without the faintest sign of shame. He dropped his coat and waistcoat on the floor with the ease of someone who’d never had to do his own laundry, then yanked his shirt over his head. His trousers followed, and Grantaire was unsurprised that Enjolras could somehow take off his socks without looking unbalanced. 

Grantaire mumbled something about having to get his supplies together. When he came back with his sanguine pencils and best sketch paper, Enjolras had already settled himself on the méridienne. Enjolras clearly did have prior experience as a model, as he’d adopted a sort of reclining contrapposto. 

“What am I posing for?” Enjolras asked. 

Grantaire briefly considered lying – Enjolras clearly had only come to the studio because letting Grantaire slaver over his naked form was slightly less objectionable than writing about the Emperor. 

“A blowjob,” Grantaire said, moving his chair close to Enjolras and laying his drawing board across his lap while Enjolras frowned at him. “It’s a commission.” 

Grantaire began sketching the contours of Enjolras’s body with the pencil. Enjolras’s build was very spare and sharp, without any softness or sweetness. Grantaire had always been very conscious of proportions in his models, he’d always had a hard time getting people’s hips to sit naturally, but Enjolras’s were so idealized even an amateur could probably produce a balanced sketch. The flare of his collarbones matched the sweep of his defined iliac furrow and God, who else would have a pelvis that finely made? 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so intent,” Enjolras said. 

“What did you expect? Your body’s quite inspiring, but I can’t sketch very well with one hand.” 

Enjolras raised one eyebrow. “I suppose I expected you to try.”

“I’ve done enough self-abuse for the week, thank you.”

Enjolras expecting the worst of him was an old frustration, but Grantaire honestly couldn’t argue against it. Grantaire started to outline Enjolras’s face, feeling acutely aware of his own failings as an artist. He could usually capture expressions with fair accuracy, but even Enjolras bored was daunting. Grantaire fussed over Enjolras’s ironically deep smile lines, which were being impossible. Enjolras stretched his arms and slipped lower on the méridienne, his eyes half-lidded.

“My instructor, Le Gros, was assigned to paint the members of the National Convention,” Grantaire said, trying to keep Enjolras awake. “He started with the new Committee for Public Safety. Do you remember how five out of nine of them were named Jean?” 

“I remember,” Enjolras said, but he was watching Grantaire now out of the corner of his eye. 

“So Gros had almost finished with this embarrassment of Jeans and had ordered an oversized canvas to paint Danton true to life, when the committee was shuffled. Robespierre, he said, was overparticular about how he was painted, but a patient model and didn’t even fidget. Saint-Just never bothered to look Gros in the eye and read during every sitting, when he wasn’t working. Saint-Just drafted Danton’s execution while asking if Gros had gotten him at the right angle.” 

“Art cannot capture a man’s character, though it can inspire. Portraits are a waste of time.” 

“It’s better than painting flies on a bowl of fruit and trying to make the viewer think of mortality,” Grantaire replied. “People interest me, so I paint them.” 

“People disappoint you.” 

“You never do,” Grantaire said with a sigh. The Enjolras he’d drawn looked like a dreamy youth. Paper was an absolute traitor to Enjolras. 

“Are you normally attracted to men?” Enjolras asked. “Or is it only me?” 

Grantaire wanted no part of the conversation. 

“I have egalitarian tastes. What about you, Enjolras? Is it only me?” 

Grantaire waited for Enjolras to laugh at him or turn angry, but Enjolras was honestly considering the question. 

“You affect me by the polarization of your ideas,” Enjolras said. “You are, in many ways, exactly what repels me. You despise the present, dismiss the future, and damn the past. I enjoyed hurting you, which unsettles me.”

He supposed that that speech was Enjolras’s version of kindness, or perhaps even an apology. 

“It’s not an uncommon response, if it worries you. It means very little,” Grantaire replied. He held up the finished sketch so Enjolras could see it. “I am a failure as an artist.” 

Enjolras took the sketch out of Grantaire’s hands. He pored over it, his brow furrowed in thought as he sat with one leg crossed over his thigh so he could hold the paper flat. 

“What about this displeases you? It’s a fair portrait. Certainly better than what I’ve seen others make of me,” Enjolras said. 

“Someone could look at this and think, what a tenderly made young man.” Grantaire threw up his hands in frustration. “Your friends are enthralled by one word from you – you have only to look at them and they stand straighter and talk of ripping up the streets against the Orléanists. I’ve made a housecat out of a tiger, a _putto_ from a seraph. There’s no animation. There’s nothing of you in it.”

Anyone but Enjolras would have tried to deny such high praise or acted flattered by it. Enjolras simply took it for fact, without any real vanity. 

“You think art can do that?” he asked, putting the sketch aside. 

“I want it to,” Grantaire said. 

“You confound me,” Enjolras said, and yet he seemed completely confident. “There is a possibility that your feelings for me are not so base as I thought, but that is not why I came here. If I’ve misjudged you, I’ll leave.”

Grantaire’s hands were shaking, so he clasped them in his lap. Enjolras had given Grantaire a way to prove himself something other than a drunken lech. All Grantaire had to do was thank Enjolras for his time and perhaps, in the future, Enjolras would see Grantaire with a little positive regard. 

Paris had gone almost entirely dark during the Three Glorious Days in 1830; the street lamps had been destroyed in the rioting. Grantaire had gone to sleep on the twenty-seventh of July and awoke to a barricade squatting hugely across the street. A young man’s limp body was dangling between a chair and an overturned cart, blood seeping out from his broken skull. 

There was a real chance Enjolras had no future at all. 

“You haven’t misjudged me,” he said. He stared down at his hands. “After you fucked me in the Musain, I went home and stared at the marks of your hand on my neck while I stroked myself off. I dug my own fingers into the little cuts from your nails and pretended it was you. I did it again the next day. I would’ve done it this morning too, but I blacked out at my desk and woke up too late. There’s hardly a sign left of what you did, anyway.” 

“Come here,” Enjolras said, reaching for Grantaire’s collar. Grantaire leaned forward, letting Enjolras pull him onto the méridienne. The position was awkward; Grantaire was supporting most of his weight on his thighs so he wouldn’t fall into Enjolras’s lap. He untied Grantaire’s cravat and pushed Grantaire’s collar open so he could press his fingers against the scratches still on Grantaire’s neck. 

“Will you let me do something for you?” Grantaire asked, inclining his head into the touch. 

“I think I’ve already given you permission.”

“You have an odd way of going about it,” Grantaire said. “I want to suck you off.”

Enjolras leaned back on his elbows and spread his legs. “So I haven’t come here on false pretences after all.”

Grantaire put his arms under Enjolras’s legs and hitched them up on his shoulders, angling Enjolras even further back on the méridienne. He licked a line down Enjolras’s thigh and rubbed his stubbly cheek against the newly damp skin. Enjolras was so certain of himself that Grantaire had almost forgotten that Enjolras was practically a virgin. Enjolras’s eyes had gone dark as he looked at Grantaire with bare curiosity.

“Have you thought about this before?” Grantaire asked. Enjolras nodded. “What did I do?”

“You took me in your mouth,” Enjolras said, his voice steady, though he shook a little when Grantaire tongued the side of his cock. “You let me use you.”

“Did you touch yourself?”

“That’s a waste of my time,” Enjolras replied. 

“This isn’t?” 

Enjolras smiled a little. “I weighed squandering an afternoon on Buonaparte against determining if I still wanted to fuck you. It was closely decided.” 

“I’ll try not to disappoint you, then,” Grantaire said, slowly drawing his tongue from Enjolras’s balls to the head of his erection. 

“God,” Enjolras gasped, gripping the sides of the méridienne. 

“Put your hands in my hair if you want more control,” Grantaire said. “It’s what most people do.” 

Grantaire wanted Enjolras desperate _now_ , so he took Enjolras into his mouth as deeply as he could. Enjolras’s breathing had gone ragged and he fisted his hands in Grantaire’s curls. Grantaire wrapped his hand around the base of Enjolras’s cock, starting to stroke as he moved his head and sucked. He relaxed his throat until he could feel his nose touch Enjolras’s stomach.

“Shit,” Enjolras hissed, bucking against him. He heard a thump that must’ve been Enjolras’s head hitting the méridienne. Enjolras tugged on his hair, trying to pull even Grantaire closer. He thrust into Grantaire’s mouth, carefully at first and then harder when Grantaire dug his fingers into Enjolras’s thighs and let him fuck his throat. Grantaire couldn’t even think enough to hold Enjolras back or choke because Enjolras was repeating Grantaire’s name while he writhed under his mouth. Grantaire felt light-headed.

Enjolras came, moaning “ _te prègui_.” He let go of Grantaire’s hair and Grantaire could finally gag, spitting out semen on Gros’s expensive upholstery before he went into an ugly coughing fit. 

“Suffering Christ on the cross,” Grantaire muttered, sitting up as he caught his breath. “Warn a man next time.”

“ _Desencusa_ ,” Enjolras said, only slightly flushed from what they’d just done. “This is new to me.” 

Grantaire almost jumped when Enjolras began undoing the buttons on his trousers. 

“I can take care of myself–”

“Obviously,” Enjolras said, with a derisive snort. “Tell me what you want.” 

Grantaire felt that the request was rather unfair, and a little like asking Tantalus whether he wanted his water flavoured with lemon or mint. “Your hands,” he answered finally. “And a kiss,” Grantaire added, because he felt daring. 

“You’ll taste foul,” Enjolras said. Grantaire’s mouth surely tasted like spunk, sleep, and day-old brandy. 

“I won’t use my tongue. Please, even just your skin,” Grantaire said, knowing his voice was quickly pitching towards the pathetic. 

Enjolras kissed him. His mouth was firm and at first, he tasted like nothing at all. But there was also a hint of blood where Enjolras had worried at the inside of his own lip and Grantaire moaned, clutching at Enjolras’s shoulders. Grantaire pushed Enjolras flat on the méridienne. Enjolras’s hand was on his cock, touching him so carefully that Grantaire reached down to show Enjolras how he liked to be stroked, putting his hand over Enjolras’s and thrusting into his palm. Grantaire wasn’t going to be able to keep to his word, he couldn’t, Enjolras was trusting him _oh so slightly_ and Grantaire stifled his desire by biting down on the tender skin of Enjolras’s neck. Enjolras’s hand shifted back to Grantaire’s hair and Enjolras groaned, turning his head for more. 

“ _God_ , Enjolras, I’m going to finish on your stomach if you don’t stop me.”

Grantaire muffled his inanities into Enjolras’s skin, marking Enjolras with his teeth as Enjolras held Grantaire against his throat. Enjolras whispered “do it” and Grantaire couldn’t delay his release any longer, spilling into Enjolras’s hand and onto his belly. Grantaire kissed Enjolras’s throat, his shoulders, the dip of his collarbone, his hairline, until Enjolras finally shoved him aside, but softly. 

“Please tell me you have a rag,” Enjolras said. Orgasm apparently left Enjolras only too briefly tender. 

“It’s washing day anyway,” Grantaire replied, tucking himself back in his trousers. He shrugged off his waistcoat and used the inside to sop up the mess he’d made of Enjolras’s chest. Grantaire did his best to clean off the méridienne as well – Gros would be furious, if he ever bothered to visit the studio again. 

“That’s disgusting,” Enjolras said, looking amused by the process of cleaning up. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time I came on my clothes this week.” 

“I want to find this terrible, but it only seems a little sad,” Enjolras said. “You debase yourself too easily, Grantaire.”

“I don’t think fellatio is debasement,” Grantaire replied. 

“That’s not what I meant, at all.” 

Grantaire was all spleen and desire and possessed of no great personal conviction, save Enjolras. And even that had lately turned wretched. 

“I have a meeting with the Cougourde,” Enjolras said, getting to his feet. He gathered up his clothes and put them on perfunctorily. “Perhaps I will see you soon at the Musain, though I doubt you’ll make me pleased about it.” 

“I’d stay away, if you asked me.” 

“No, you wouldn’t,” Enjolras replied. He tied off his cravat, hiding the bruises from Grantaire’s teeth. “Goodbye, Grantaire.” 

Grantaire’s mouth still tasted a little like Enjolras’s blood.

**Author's Note:**

> Now illustrated by my muse, my better half, Nisie: [click here for NSFW but artfully composed dick masterpiece](http://nisiedrawsstuff.tumblr.com/post/52713153452/so-sath-has-been-wooing-me-with-poetry-and-sweet).
> 
> She's also illustrated Jehan as St. Sebastian, which can be found in all its glory [here](http://nisiedrawsstuff.tumblr.com/post/71993104527/grantaire-getting-ready-to-paint-prouvaire-as-st).
> 
> Part 2 of a 4 part arc.
> 
> No Latin this time, but I snuck in some Occitan, despite knowing approximately zero about it. 
> 
> Te prègui: please  
> Desencusa: sorry
> 
> Yeah, Grantaire blew Enjolras back to Provence.
> 
> Edit: 'ars moriendi' means 'the art of dying' in Latin, so I guess the language sneaked in somehow.


End file.
